Free kibbles

SOCIALISM:

The government lost $1.3 billion on the Chrysler bailout. That's like pennies to the crooks in Washington.

State Attorneys General are negotiating broad immunity for banks for all the mortgage fraud.

"State attorneys general are negotiating to give major banks wide immunity over irregularities in handling foreclosures, even as evidence has emerged that banks are continuing to file questionable documents.A coalition of all 50 states' attorneys general has been negotiating settlements with five of the biggest U.S. banks that would include payment of up to $25 billion in penalties and commitments to follow new rules. In exchange, the banks would get immunity from civil lawsuits by the states, as well as similar guarantees by the Justice Department and Department of Housing and Urban Development, which have participated in the talks."

The banks don't care about the fine because the Fed will effectively pay it. This is a good reminder that government exists to protect the ruling class and to loot the people on their behalf. Legislatures exist to make the crimes of the ruling class legal. How much more fraud will have to be exposed before people realize that government is the problem, not the solution.

ECONOMY:

Prediction that unemployment is going to top 10 percent.

TAX AND SPEND:

Confirmation of my theory about bond holders (a theory which I probably put together from reading North in the first place).

"An increase in the debt ceiling will send the same negative message to holders of Treasury debt. But these people are overwhelmingly optimistic about the short-term future of U.S. government solvency. They do not care about the long term, because they believe that they can always sell their T-debt positions to willing buyers. They have faith that their personal optimism regarding Federal solvency will be widely held when they decide it's time to sell and buy some other asset. They think that they can become pessimistic ahead of the masses of holders of T-debt. They think they will be smarter and swifter than the market for T-debt. They think they are very smart indeed"

Short term thinking like this will lead to long term disaster.

"These supposed experts were dead wrong in 2009. They did not see the Greek debt crisis coming, any more than they saw the financial crisis of 2008 coming. They see themselves as ever so clever, and then they lose hundreds of billions of dollars."

Funny.

"Then they call on governments to bail them out, which (so far) governments have done."

Not funny.

Obama and Boehner performed a new, dramatic act in the debt ceiling negotiation charade. Obama summoning Congressional leaders sounds a lot like a king summoning a minister. How stupid are we that we have empowered two men to control hundreds of trillions in dollars of debt that we have to pay for?

FAA funding runs out at midnight.

"In a news release, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said he was disappointed that lawmakers did not pass a reauthorization and that funding is set to run out at midnight Friday. "Because of their inaction, states and airports won't be able to work on their construction projects, and too many people will have to go without a paycheck," he said. "This is no way to run the best aviation system in the world."The release goes on to say, "The safety of the flying public will not be compromised."
Air traffic controllers will remain on the job, but the furloughs will affect many FAA engineers, scientists, computer specialists, community planners and others. According to the Department of Transportation, FAA workers could be furloughed in 35 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico."

Why is the FAA doing construction? This is just another federal ditch-digging jobs program.

US bonds are not magical. Markets will deal with a default on them as they deal with defaults on any other bond.

FEDERAL RESERVE:

Ron Paul succinctly sums up Austrian Business Cycle Theory and explains our current problems in an op-ed about the debt ceiling:

"The Austrian School’s theory of the business cycle describes how loose central bank monetary policy causes booms and busts: It drives down interest rates below the market rate, lowering the cost of borrowing; encourages malinvestment; and causes economic miscalculation as resources are diverted from the highest value use as reflected in true consumer preferences. Loose monetary policy caused the dot-com bubble and the housing bubble, and now is causing the government debt bubble."

This will end badly, worse than anything we've ever experienced.

HEALTH CARE:

Because a company advertised the healthy benefits of walnuts, the FDA declared they were a drug and ordered the company to get permission to sell them. I used to make the argument that everything we ingest is a drug because everything we ingest changes our body chemistry. That's supposedly the definition of a drug. The FDA has caught on and is using that principle to oppress Americans.

"The FDA’s letter continues: “We have determined that your walnut products are promoted for conditions that cause them to be drugs because these products are intended for use in the prevention, mitigation, and treatment of disease.” Furthermore, the products are also “misbranded” because they “are offered for conditions that are not amenable to self-diagnosis and treatment by individuals who are not medical practitioners; therefore, adequate directions for use cannot be written so that a layperson can use these drugs safely for their intended purposes.” Who knew you had to have directions to eat walnuts?"

You can't make this stuff up.

"“The FDA’s language,” Faloon writes, “resembles that of an out-of-control police state where tyranny [reigns] over rationality.”"

Ya think?

"Meanwhile, Faloon points out, foods that have little to no redeeming value are advertised endlessly, often with dubious health claims attached. For example, Frito-Lay is permitted to make all kinds of claims about its fat-laden, fried products, including that Lay’s potato chips are “heart healthy.” Faloon concludes that “the FDA obviously does not want the public to discover that they can reduce their risk of age-related disease by consuming healthy foods. They prefer consumers only learn about mass-marketed garbage foods that shorten life span by increasing degenerative disease risk.”"

That's exactly right. The FDA and its corporate partners are conspiring to make Americans sick so they can make money off our sickness. All governments exist to help the ultra rich, the bankers and the corporations loot everybody else.

GLOBAL WARMING AND ENERGY:

Environmentalists who blocked power plants are killing people in this heat wave.

"It’s like something you’d expect in a third world country. During one of the hottest summers on record, a utility company in Detroit has announced it will turn off the air conditioners despite the National Weather Service issuing an Excessive Heat Warning for all of Southeast Michigan.From CBS News yesterday:
The excessive heat and higher electrical demand has led DTE Energy to begin intentional rolling blackouts in one Metro Detroit community, Thursday afternoon, and at least one other area could follow.
…
There were about 25,000 DTE customers without electricity, Thursday afternoon, as temperatures were set to hit the triple digits in Metro Detroit.  The biggest outages right now are in Redford Township, Detroit’s westside, Ferndale and Plymouth Township.
Dozens of communities surrounding Detroit are going without electricity and people aredying. It would be easy to blame Detroit Edison and the utilities for the outages and deaths, but the problem is with the EPA."

Environmentalists hate their fellow men.

WAR ON DRUGS:

Documenting the routine lawlessness of the federal agents investigating Lance Armstrong.

"In the latest salvo, attorneys for Armstrong have filed a complaint alleging that the authorities have been illegally leaking grand jury material to the media, and specifically Salena Roberts of Sports Illustrated, the New York Times, "60 Minutes," the Associated Press (AP) and others"

This is SOP.

"The fact that federal agents have no regard for the law – while simultaneously proclaiming their adherence to it – and the fact that no one in the news media seems to care that Lance Armstrong’s rights are being eviscerated so that Selena Roberts and her friends can gain financial and personal rewards is a sign of the times. The United States is not a country where those in authority believe they are bound by the law, and the Progressive Media, which prattles on about the "majesty of the law," actually spits on the law every day so that more people can be wrongly charged and imprisoned. If one wishes to understand the chief end of Progressivism, this is it."

We did this to ourselves.

POLICE STATE:

US seeks extradition of British man for linking to pirated material.

WAR:

Coordinated terrorist attack kills over 30 in Norway.

POLITICS:

Study claims that seeing the American flag transforms voters into Republicans. No wonder leftists hate the flag. This is silly.

This is the lesson about democracy the elite don't want us to know...

"One thing that Into the Cannibal’s Pot demonstrates is that democracy alone is not at all desirable if it is not attached to a culture that highly values the protection of life, liberty and property."

As government works relentlessly to devalue life, liberty and property in America, we're learning that lesson the hard way.

"American elites are silent about the various outrages occurring in South Africa, Mercer argues, because they support and sometimes personally benefit from similar policies in their own country."

No kidding.

"Mercer shows that Nelson Mandella, who was imprisoned before the worldwide collapse of socialism in the late 1980s/early 1990s, is still a devoted socialist. He gets the economics of apartheid exactly backwards, for instance: It was a system of governmental laws and regulations instigated by white labor unions, and was not an example of capitalism. This was explained wonderfully in Walter E. Williams’ book, South Africa’s War Against Capitalism. Nevertheless, Mandella announced in a 1997 speech that "the evolution of the capitalist system in our country put on the highest pedestal the promotion of the material interests of the white minority." Wrong, Nelson. As Mercer points out, the "biggest industrial upheaval in South Africa’s history" was a 1922 miner’s strike that came as a result of the fact that the capitalist mine owners wanted to hire more blacks. The white labor unions whose slogan was "Workers of the World Unite, Keep South Africa White," opposed this and the power of the government was employed to enforce discrimination against black workers. It was the capitalists who wanted to abolish the apartheid system because there were profits in doing so. White miners were paid much more than black miners even though they were not much more productive."

They'll never teach than in the US. Note that Williams's book is out of print and costs over a hundred dollars used.

Lots of Republicans are already polling well against Obama.

LOCAL:

The forecast for today is a high of 102. That's as hot as and way more humid than Texas. I still haven't seen anybody blame global warming.

MISC:

New minimal running shoe.

Jeffrey Tucker explains what's wrong with Facebook. Most people I know understood this the moment they found out how Facebook worked, but apparently 500 million people didn't. Google figured it out too, and that's why Google+ is significantly improved.

"In other words, Google+ found the thing about Facebook that distorts human associations and created a platform that more closely impersonates human social relations. To me, this is absolutely brilliant."

It is, and it should be a lesson for everybody. One key to success is having an idea the accentuates the human experience.